A Quick Introduction to Cerner Integration with Health Solutions

Cerner is a leading healthcare technology system developer with a global presence. Its EHR/EMR systems are among the most popular across hospitals and clinics in the United States and the world. Cerner leverages standards, network connections, and nationwide exchange to simplify data flow among EHRs. Cerner integration allows clinicians to get a complete picture of the medical situation of their patients through easy data access, empowering them to treat more effectively.  

Siloing of medical information is a major problem in healthcare. This happens because of different medical software development companies’ varying programming languages, data formats, and standards. Cerner systems are characteristically compatible to interoperate with systems developed by other companies.  

Why Should Healthcare Centers Choose Cerner Integration? 

Patient medical information is vital for clinical care. This includes immunizations, allergies, previous medications, diagnoses, and medical history. This information enables providers to make informed decisions about ordering tests, scans, and prescribing medications. However, research shows that EHR data often needs to be completed.  

While incomplete medical records are a problem by itself, it is exacerbated by the fact that providers don’t know what is lacking. Most patients don’t remember their immunizations or if they would have some allergic reaction to any treatment. Without this knowledge, it is potentially dangerous for patients’ health and would also affect the overall clinical outcomes for patients without allergies.  

The unequal distribution of data gaps across patient groups worsens the problem of incomplete EHR data. In other words, certain population groups are disproportionately affected by the gaps in medical information. Needless to point out, minorities and people of color who are more prone to be from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to have higher gaps in their EHR. This is because these people tend to have lower or unequal access to all types of care. As a result, the likelihood of treatment errors, side effects, and adverse reactions is much higher for such people.   

Additionally, people who travel frequently or have moved to different parts of the country frequently, too, might need more health records.  

This is where custom healthcare software solutions for Cerner EHR integration can play a vital role. Cerner software solutions for healthcare integration facilitate seamless and secure data flow, providing doctors with fast and hassle-free access to necessary information. Cerner systems and Cerner API can connect healthcare organizations to data from other organizations, Health Information Exchanges (HIE), provider health apps, government registries like immunizations and prescription drug monitoring programs, and so on. 

Furthermore, Cerner Solutions has progressed on API and interoperability for integrated healthcare solutions to facilitate rapid usability of medical data from any source. These advancements will streamline workflows by processing collected data and presenting it in an actionable way. This provides doctors with all the necessary information about patients pertinent to the current situation. Moreover, such availability is extremely important in emergencies like car crashes, heart attacks, gunshot wounds, etc. Many patients could not articulate their medical histories to their providers. So, having a complete picture of the patient’s health situation is paramount for effective care.  

Cerner is a founding member of a non-profit organization called the CommonWell Health Alliance. The purpose of this organization is to advocate for policies and the creation of standards to enable data interoperability amongst different EHR platforms, Epic Systems included. Cerner strives to stay true to this mission and ensure seamless data interchange among healthcare organizations. Allscripts being a member of this alliance also ensures that its Allscripts EMR too makes data exchange easier.  

Benefits of Cerner Integration

Using a Cerner platform or Cerner API for interoperability provides numerous benefits to larger hospitals, medium-sized clinics, and private practices. These are both clinical and administrative and go a long way in streamlining patient care. Let’s look at some of those benefits in detail –

• Access to patient records from medical centers nationwide and information about the last one visited.  
• One single consolidated repository of clinical data, the ability to share discharge summaries and doctor’s notes.  
• Connect with acute and ambulatory care centers using a single standard connection.   
• Secure sharing of messages and documents with other providers.  
• Views of updated medication history and medication brand alternatives corresponding to each patient’s health plan.  
• Manage prior authorizations, assess patients’ usage of controlled substances, and prescribe such drugs.  
• Access data from other organizations, government registries, and PACS systems for viewing radiology images.  

Cerner Integration For Telehealth 

Advanced telehealth solutions leverage telecommunication and digital technologies to access and disseminate medical services. Cerner EHR integration solutions for telehealth enable medical organizations and private practices to offer effective remote care services. This is possible because providers could view patients’ medical histories during a virtual consultation, make notes, and prescribe medication from the same interface.  

Integrating Cerner EHR with a telemedicine platform would facilitate fast and secure data exchange between the solutions. Additionally, this integrated application would also be interoperable with billing solutions. This paves the way for a complete integrated telehealth platform that allows providers to offer consultations, provide medical services, and bill for the same.  

The emergence of telehealth was almost immediately after the Covid-19 pandemic. Since people were forced to quarantine indoors, accessing care remotely became vital. Cerner leaped at the opportunity to enable providers to offer remote care services. Integrating telehealth, EHR, and billing platforms through Cerner integration offers consultations and billing features. Each virtual consultation would be followed by charge capture, coding, and claims generation. 

Following the pandemic, the potential for telehealth was realized across the healthcare industry. It proved to be a great way to address major problems in American healthcare – cost and access. People living in distant rural communities often suffer from a lack of access to specialist care. They had to drive long distances to see the required doctor. In light of this, Cerner unveiled a new telehealth software.  

Cerner’s telehealth platform includes all features for seeing patients remotely, billing for services, and prescribing medications. It enables people to access physicians from another city and can also act as a remote patient monitoring system. Moreover, it also addresses the cost problem since it is cheaper to have a virtual consultation than a physical in-person one.   

Remote care is one of the hottest trends in the healthcare industry. Innovations like IoT-based medical wearables will increase the demand for telemedicine solutions. Nevertheless, Cerner integration can meet any demand by enabling multiple medical platforms to communicate without hassle.

Conclusion 

Cerner integration enables multiple disparate medical record systems to exchange medical data. As newer innovations in health care arrive this decade, data is seen as being the core of any future technology adoption in the industry. As demands for better and more powerful data analytics solutions grow, the need for seamless interchange of the same data is only expected to grow proportionately. As a result, interoperability solutions will play a bigger role than ever. 

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